What Students Learn From Watching You

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If you ask me to pass a quiz on what that teacher might have taught me, there's a chance I would fail today.
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I don't really remember what the units were about.
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But what I can tell you is that I can tell you the way that teacher looked at me when I walked in after getting in trouble somewhere else in the building.
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There was no, oh, here we go again.
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It was just, I'm glad you're here.
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It's good to see you grab a seat.
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Education needs people who are truly pleasant, not just in the building.
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I'm Emma DeShazer.
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And welcome to Home Room Attendance.
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Your seat is safe.
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What's going on, Pod?
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Welcome to Home Room Attendance.
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I'm your host, Ever DeShazer, and today I'm asking, are you present or are you absent?
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Let's begin.
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The statement I want to start with to get us thinking this episode is your students are going to forget most of what you teach them this year.
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And I know you're like, okay, what am I doing this for?
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And that one stings, but stay with me for a second.
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They will forget the vocabulary words, they will forget the different steps on an anchor chart, but a lot of them are going to remember exactly how you acted the day a lesson didn't go the way it was supposed to.
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A lot of them are going to remember exactly how you acted when the principal walked in during the worst lesson of the year.
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While you are teaching that lesson, your students are studying you.
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A while back, I put out a lesson that was your students don't learn from your lesson plans.
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And today I want to take that one a little bit further because this episode is about what students learn from watching every adult in the building and how we can start teaching that lesson on purpose.
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And before we get into that, as I adjust my mic, um, if you've been enjoying these um episodes, I would always ask that you leave a review.
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Uh give it a like on uh if you're watching on YouTube, give it a thumbs up or wherever you're listening to, uh leave a review.
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That would be super, super helpful.
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So let's get to work.
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In 1961, a Stanford psychologist named Albert Bandeur ran one of the most famous experiments in the history of child development.
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He brought preschoolers into a room one at a time.
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In the corner was this big inflatable clown doll cow called Bobo.
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If you've if you're my age, 40 plus, you would know Bobo.
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Some of the kids watched an adult walk up to that doll and go to work on it, punching it, kicking it, yelling at it.
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Other kids watch an adult play quietly with toys and ignore the doll completely.
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Then each child after that got a turn in a room with that exact same doll.
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And I can assume that you already know what happened.
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The kids who watched the aggressive adult went after the doll.
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Some of them even repeated word for word what that adult what that adult had yelled and shared uh with that doll.
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Nobody told them, nobody rewarded them for it.
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They watched an adult and they did what they saw.
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And that was more than 60 years ago.
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Yet we still walk into buildings and act like kids mostly learn from what we say.
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I had a favorite teacher growing up.
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If you ask me to pass a quiz on what that teacher might have taught me, there's a chance I would fail today.
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I don't really remember what the units were about, but what I can tell you is that I can tell you the way that teacher looked at me when I walked in after getting in trouble somewhere else in the building.
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There was no, oh, here we go again.
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It was just, I'm glad you're here.
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It's good to see you.
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Grab a seat.
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Years later, I got to thank that teacher, and I didn't thank them uh for the lesson.
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I thanked them for how they treated me on days I made it hard to.
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That is what kids study.
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How you treat a kid on their worst day, and how you treat a kid um, and how you treat the kid sitting next to them on theirs.
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So think in your moment, in your head for a moment about your favorite teacher that you've ever had.
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I want you to picture them.
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And I bet the first thing I've done I've done a similar activity, but the first thing that comes to mind isn't gonna be a lesson.
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It's a look, it's a phrase, uh, the way they made you feel when you walked the door.
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That's the part that sticks with our kids.
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And right now, somebody in your building is going to remember you that way.
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The question is, what will they remember?
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You want to know what your students have learned from you, watch them play school.
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Picture a group of second graders at indoor recess.
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One of them is a teacher, and she's got a clipboard, she's got the voice.
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She claps to the rhythm uh to get everyone's attention.
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Two claps on two, one, two, clap, clap.
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And then one of the students talks out of terms.
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Young lady puts her hands on her hip, lets out the biggest sigh you have ever heard.
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Oh, I'm so tired of this class.
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Across the room, the teacher hears it and freezes.
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That's her line.
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Word for word, that is what that teacher shares in the class with those students.
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The little girl thought she was doing a great job.
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In her mind, that is what a teacher sounds like.
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We've been there.
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If you want honest feedback on your teaching, let a seven to ten-year-old play you for five minutes.
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For all of the things they copy, they'll copy the good stuff, but they'll copy the bad stuff too.
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Kids will copy everything, and when they play school, it will tell on us for who and how we are as an educator.
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So, you know, another example.
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Picture a fifth grader helping the kid next to him with a math problem.
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The other kid there is frustrated and ready to quit.
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And the fifth grader leans over and says, Take your time, show me show me what you tried first.
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That's the teacher's line.
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He uh heard it so many times that it became his line.
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Nobody put that on a standards checklist.
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Uh he he picked it up the same way those little ones picked up the yelling, and that's just by watching.
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Now, this goes just beyond classroom teachers.
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Every single adult in the building is on camera all day long, and not like actual camera, but like the figurative camera of these kids that are in front of us.
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You know, the front office at 7:45 in the morning uh is a first adult voice.
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A lot of families here on a day-to-day basis.
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The lunchroom, when it gets loud, is a lesson in how us as adults handle chaos.
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The hallway conversation two teachers have about a student when they think nobody's listening, that is also a lesson, too.
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Somebody is always listening, somebody is always watching, somebody is always observing and paying attention to how we maneuver ourselves as educators.
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Think about the parent who walks in the front office upset, or a kid is sitting in the chair by the door watching this parent.
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Now, I I I know some of your schools, you don't have upset parents that come in, so only our school.
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But if the adult behind the desk gets defensive and short, that kid learns this is how grown-ups handle conflict.
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There's been so many times a parent comes in just furious and they are disrespectful to me, they cuss me out, they say all types of crazy things.
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And in my head, I'm like, this is why your kid acts the way your kid acts.
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We our students are studying how adults handle conflict.
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If the adult says, I can tell you're frustrated, let me help you figure this out, that kid will learn something completely different than the one that just comes in cussing and fussing and all those things.
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Same office, same parent, two very different lessons that we are teaching our kids.
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And now I know the parents can come in and be disrespectful.
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But us as the adults, us as the professionals, us as whatever our position is in the school, must remain professional.
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And even though that student can learn these bad behaviors from their parent, they can also learn the good behaviors as they are watching and observing us respond to the negativity of um their parent.
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So, what I want us to try is every time that you have an interaction with a student this week, I want you to ask yourself one question.
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Would I say it exactly this way if the kid were standing right behind me?
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Some of us are going to get very quiet with the conversations we have about a kid, if the kid was there actually listening to how we may speak about some of these kids.
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When students hear adults call a student that one, we all know that one, I was that one, they learn which kids are worth giving up on.
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When they hear adults talk about a colleague behind their back, they learn how people treat each other when they leave the room.
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So the hardest part is we can't leave this up to whoever happens to be calm or kind.
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The building has to decide on purpose what are our adults going to model?
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It's a simple way to start.
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At your next staff meeting, agree on two norms, write them down, put them where everyone can see it.
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Here's two that you can borrow.
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First, we talk about students the way we would if their parents were standing right next to us.
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The second, when an adult makes a mistake in front of kids, we name it and we fix it.
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A norm is something that we need to make sure everyone can see, but they set the standard for how we act and conduct ourselves in the school.
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There are two moments in a day, in my opinion, that teach more about that that teach more than any other days.
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When you're frustrated and when you're wrong.
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So let's first start when you are frustrated.
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Kids learn what to do with big feelings by watching where adults put their big feelings.
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If you slam a stapler, when you're frustrated, kids learn to slam.
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If you say out loud, I'm frustrated now, so I'm going to take a breath before I answer.
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You have just taught emotional regulation without giving your kids a workshop.
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You've taught it in real time.
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Now when you're wrong.
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Picture a teacher who just snapped at a student in front of the entire class.
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It's been a long day.
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Tired as heck.
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Kid pushed a button, kid came in hot.
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The next morning, she pulls that student aside before the bell and says, You know, yesterday I was very short with you in front of everyone.
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And that's not fair to you.
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And I'm sorry.
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Kid shrugs it off.
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You know, it's cool.
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And that may seem like the end of it.
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But two weeks later, that kid bumps somebody's tray in the lunchroom, then stops and turns around, turns around and goes back and is like, My bad, that was my fault.
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That kid very well could have learned how to circle back and apologize just from that simple moment uh that took place in the classroom.
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And that apology that took you all of 15 seconds, a lot of us were really never taught to do that.
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And a lot of us as kids, I say us because I'm always like the 35 and up generation, have never, I don't really, I can't say I don't ever recall, because I'm sure a teacher did it at some point.
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But it was very rare that a teacher admitted they were wrong.
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Teachers always seem like they were right when we were kids, and I think there's power in a teacher apologizing and being wrong.
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Um, that's a teachable lesson for all of um the kids.
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And I would could even argue that it works the other way.
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An adult who tells the truth about him or herself earns the kind of trust that a perfect record never will.
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Kids know when we got it wrong.
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Um, they're just waiting to see if we if if we know it too.
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And now some of you are listening, you're like, great, I gotta be perfect with 30 kids watching me.
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And that is not what I am saying.
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Kids don't need a perfect adult, they need an adult to watch mess up and recover.
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Recovery, the recovery from the mistake is more what our kids learn from, and the recovery is what they're gonna need on their worst day.
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One way to practice this is just a do-over.
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You say something sharp, you catch it.
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Hold on, hold on, everyone.
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Let's pause.
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Let me try that again.
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Then you say it the way you had initially meant to say it.
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Takes 20, 30 seconds, and every kid in that room learned that it is okay to start over in a moment without starting the whole day over.
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We can't put grace on a vocabulary quiz and expect kids to understand it.
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They learn grace by watching someone give it.
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Sometimes to them, sometimes uh to themselves, sometimes to other people.
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The preschoolers in that study at Stanford didn't need a lesson.
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It wasn't some elaborate lesson plan on how to treat that doll.
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They needed one adult to show them.
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Every building has culture, and the youngest people in the building are copying that culture every single day they walk through the door.
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So this week, I want us to pay as educators, I want us to pay attention to what we're modeling in the hallway, in the lounge, in the front office, in our classroom, outside, in the parking lot, at the playground, and especially in the middle of a hard moment.
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And here's what I will uh leave you with today.
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If your students copied exactly how you handled this last week, what would they have learned?
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What would they have learned if they copied exactly how you handled everything this week?
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Again, I want us to remember our kids learn more from what we do than what we say.
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So if this one you enjoyed this episode, uh please like, please subscribe, all those things that we ask you to do on a day on a week-to-week basis.
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But truly an honor that you have taken time out to lock in with me to join me.
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I don't ever take for granted that people uh tune in every Sunday as this comes live or whatever day you're listening to it.
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But I truly, truly appreciate uh you for spending this time with me today.
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Uh, you have been present for homeroom attendance.
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Class is dismissed.